Sunday, June 04, 2006

MSNBC reported Officials in New York and Washington, the two cities targeted in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, were anything but happy after learning that Homeland Security was giving them far fewer counterterrorism dollars this year than in 2005.

Maybe the problem is that they got too much in previous years, and were not spending it well.

New York City will receive $124 million — the largest amount under the Urban Area Security Initiative.

But they are greedy, and want even more

But that's just 60 percent of the $208 million given in 2005. The cut comes primarily because the Homeland Security Department determined that New York has no national monuments or icons

That is ridiculous. They may have failed to fill in that box in their request, but they also just said they wanted the money for day to day maintenance of existing programs, while the other cities needed seed money to start their own programs, where they had nothing. Also the Urban Area Security Initiative is not just about terrorism, but also planning for Bird Flu and other threats. Here is the City of New Orleans's page for the UASI, which states the goal is "maintain an “all hazards” approach, meaning looking toward and planning for all possible natural (hurricanes, flooding, etc.) and man-made disasters (Chemical, biological, nuclear, radiological and explosive terrorist attacks)"

“We’re going to continue to do what it takes to keep this city safe and then worry about the money but do I think they should have given us more, I don’t think there’s any question,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference after the grants were announced Wednesday. “When you stop a terrorist, they have map of New York City in their pocket, they don’t have a map of any of the other 46 places or 45 places,” the Republican mayor added, referring to the total number of cities that share the funds.

If you stop them in NYC, that seems very reasonable, but the Feds may have other ideas about plans that they have blocked.